INFINITY HOLD3

by Longyear, Barry B.

  I fell into the fog holding Mercy Jane's hands. Pills. Damned pills. There was crying to do. Crying for Alna, Nance, Mercy Jane, and even for Anna Tane. Somewhere hidden away there was crying to do for Bando Nicos. But the pills killed the feelings, dried the tears, made every terror and joy the same: nothing.

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  The Best Man for the Job

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  Bit by bit, the motion and the noise of the wagon hauled me back from dreamland. We were moving over hard, rocky ground. I opened my eyes and outside it was clear daylight. The aches in my head and leg were gone, leaving a confused void surrounded by tensed muscles and puzzled gratitude. Between me and the glare from the open door, I could see Ratt sitting alone at the table. Ratt was staring at a blank wall, fixed solid on something mental.

  I elbowed myself up until my head was propped up by the wall. I wasn't wearing any clothes and I was covered by a couple of clean desert sheets. I was even clean myself. I elbowed up further and looked through the window. The jagged reds and tans of the Sunrise Mountains looked back. There were some sharks out there riding critters. They were mostly Comini's men, and they looked grim. As I looked at them and the mountain country they came from, a down feeling choked my throat. I slumped back down in my bed.

  Who in the hell were we to invade Hand territory and take on Carlo and Iron Lee? Those mokkers'd been running gangs for more than twenty years. The Razai was still keeping time in days. That seemed more significant to me than the fact that they had us badly outgunned and outnumbered. I couldn't catch my breath.

  "You're awake," Ratt declared.

  "You got a real eye for a clue, Ratt. I'm making you my chief of detectives."

  "Hey!" the kid shouted at the door, splitting my head down the middle. "The chief's up! Tell The Taps, Mercy Jane, and get the general!" Deadeye stuck his head in through the door, nodded, and left. I heard his critter's hooves trolloping into the distance.

  The headache was on me again like blue on fuzz. "Pipe down, kid, okay? No more yelling. I don't care if Carlo himself is coming at me with a nuke. No more yelling." I pushed myself up into a sitting position, my back against the wall. "What's going on? Where are we?"

  "We've been in Fire Alley since daybreak. The Boss and Number Two are leading columns through the mountains around the valley. Our column is going straight through the middle with the dummies."

  "What? Our column? Dummies? What're you talking about?"

  "We got General Comini, the sick and wounded, the small children, and about ten thousand rifles, around two hundred autos scattered among them. They're mostly Comini's squats. Deadeye's in charge unless you get better."

  "Couldn't Nance've talked this over with me first?"

  "You were out of town and she couldn't wait."

  I rubbed my eyes and dug the sleep grit out of them. Deadeye running cops. I couldn't ment that right then. A more disturbing thought than that had been uttered. "Bait?"

  "That's what this column is, Chief: bait."

  Ratt calling me "Chief" instead of greaseball, etc. bothered me a lot. "What're you doing here?"

  The kid studied me for a second, then looked away. "You said you had a job for me and to stick close. I been sticking close."

  "Yeah. I remember." Something was weird, but I couldn't get my scope on it. Another feeling was there, as well. "Kid, I could bite the ass off a rhino. Is there any chow around here?"

  Ratt pushed back his chair, stood, and walked over to a pile of kitbags and containers on one of the benches. He grabbed a kit bag from the pile, reached in, and came out with a fist full of what looked like petrified snakes. "They're roots. They taste okay."

  I tried a small one. It crunched like a carrot and it tasted of turpentine, but sweet. It was sort of like a slightly green mango. By the time I'd finished three of them, Ratt had gotten me a cup of that apricot-flavored juice and some moist dark bread that tasted of licorice. I devoured the lot.

  When I went to put on my blues, I noticed that they were very clean and very mended. The bloodstains that had covered the left leg were mostly gone, and the bullet holes were patched. "This is great," I said to Ratt as I gingerly pulled on my underwear and trousers. "Who's keeping house? You?"

  "Not me," he answered as he helped me into my Greenville uniform jacket. "Lots of sharks've started up little businesses. Food gathering, cooking, baby-sitting. The laundry we use is run by a Duat yard monster with the Black and Silver." Ratt caught my blank look. "The Black and Silver? Up front in the main walking column?"

  "The laundry got a name?"

  "Yeah. Bud's Sudz. His motto is 'Pay up on delivery or I'll kick in your face.' We been paying with clothing, food, and stuff."

  It wasn't exactly like the RCs had a traditional service to barter in exchange. "Where're we getting our stuff?"

  "You know. The supply wagon. Sharks who die without leaving their things to anybody, goodies we liberated from Kegel's camp, and lots of donations."

  I laughed. I laughed until it hurt. Sharks making donations to the cops. Yeah, right. I figured I'd get right on that. "Donations, my cankered ass." I pointed a shaking finger at the kid. "Have you jerkoffs been running some gentle protection while I've been flat? If you people've gone dirty, I'll smoke every damned one of you."

  Ratt went over to the pile of kitbags, reached into one, came out with a stack of papers, and came back to my bed. "I said donations, and that's what I meant." He stuck the papers in my face.

  "No need to get hostile, chup."

  "Look at the letters. We got bags of 'em." I took the papers and looked at the first one.

  "Dear Bando Nicos," it said. "Here is some food from the left flank column sharks from Oromasdes. Please get well and thank you for the Law." It was signed with the scrawls of maybe twenty names.

  Prophet's ghost looked over my shoulder as I shook my head. The ghost was shaking its head, too. "Where's Oromasdes? Never heard of the place."

  "Me neither," said Ratt.

  I was numb by the time I read the next one. It was hard to make out the semi-literate scribble, but the note said that its author was grateful to have the same rights as a grown-up, he never had to be afraid of grown-ups again, and that one day he wanted to be an RC. He promised to pray to God for me to get well, and his gift to me was a cap that he had made because Mercy Jane had said I needed to keep the sun off my head.

  I looked up and Ratt was holding out a hat made from a silvered sun sheet. It had a long stiff visor in front and a shoelace adjustment in back. I took it from him and examined it. I was no judge, but the sewing looked very good. The hat fit and was very light. The kid had signed his note, "A friend." I removed the hat and held it in my hands.

  Prophet's ghost and me were still staring at that silly-looking hat when I heard critters pulling up to the moving wagon. General Comini, sweaty and covered with dust, came in through the door followed by his number two, Shava Ido. "My god. You're alive," said Comini.

  "Another detective," I muttered.

  He walked over, stood next to me, and placed a hand on my shoulder. "You'll never believe how glad I am to see you up and around."

  I placed the pile of notes inside the silver cap and put it aside. Ignoring my dizziness and using Ratt for a crutch, I made it over to the table, where I lowered myself into a chair. If my time on Tartaros hadn't taught me anything else, it let me know that I can't stand entertaining company flat on my ass in bed.

  "Okay, General, talk to me about bait."

  He paused for a beat, glanced at his number two, and reached into his jacket. He pulled out a cloth map and spread it out on the table as Shava Ido sat down. The general pointed with his finger. "Minnie McDavies and Herb Ollick drew this. They brought back some valuable information." His voice was tense as he pointed at the map, filling me in on the situation.

  East of the Sunrise, between the mountains and the Golden Ocean, stretched Ir
on Lee's territory. It was cut in half by a gulf that extended inland to within a few kilometers of the eastern slope of the mountains, all of the way into Hand territory. The body of water was called the Chop Gulf by virtue of Iron Lee controlling both sides of the ocean entrance. Except for the western shore of the gulf, Carlo was landlocked. To sail his boats into the ocean, however, the Hand had to pay Iron Lee a stiff toll. This little enterprise had been eating at Carlo's liver for at least twenty years.

  For just as long the situation had been steaming Lee's rug, since Carlo squatting on the western shore of the gulf left no land route to tie Lee's territory together. This state of affairs had been the cause for at least two dozen skirmishes and four major wars between the chops and the goombas.

  Directly west of the gulf was the main pass through the Sunrise Mountains. On the side of the mountains facing the Big Grass and the Razai, the pass was wide enough to be called a valley. Because of how the sunrises and sunsets played against the mountains, they called it Fire Alley. There was some crude farming there, some lughox ranching, as well as the herding of other kinds of animals. The homes were in strongholds up in the cliffs.

  In the western end of the valley Iron Lee was waiting for us with three hundred thousand mounted rifles hidden in the caves and draws of the north side, while another quarter of a million of his squats were keeping low in the hills and trees of the south side. At its eastern end the valley narrowed. Blocking that end was a third of Carlo T.'s mounted rifles.

  Supposedly Carlo's squats were positioned to drive into our center while Lee closed the jaws on us from the north and south. Minnie and Herb had found, however, that the goomba force was divided into three main armies. One was positioned at the eastern end of the valley as advertised. The other two, however, had different fish to micro. One army was positioned to invade Lee's northern territory and the other was aimed at the southern half of the chop empire. When the fighting started, Carlo would enter both halves of Lee's territory, while his army guarding the eastern end of the valley would indeed strike, just as soon as the Razai and Lee had killed themselves on each other. Carlo would then move in to do cleanup on both the Razai and Iron Lee.

  Comini looked at me. "Lee's territory is defended by only a few thousand rifles in the north and south. Once the Fire Alley fight starts, Carlo will send in a hundred thousand rifles in each direction and wipe them."

  I shook my head as I studied the map. "I don't get it. Is Iron Lee all hardwood? If this is like you say, the man's got a skull full of jellybeans."

  The general stood up and stretched his back. "You might be closer than you think. According to your friend Minnie, Iron Lee is a very troubled fellow."

  "Troubled about what?"

  "You."

  "Me?"

  He nodded. "You and the Law."

  "You're packed. Lee's never heard of me."

  "He's heard of you," said Shava Ido. "His people have all heard about the Law. To hear the spies tell it, Iron Lee's talking to the shadows."

  I held out my hands. "I don't get it. Herb hasn't had enough time to sell Lee's whole army."

  "He didn't," said Comini. "By the time Herb Ollick got to Lee's squats, they were already sold."

  My eyebrows went up. "Then, who?"

  "Carlo." When Yani Comini saw the expression on my face, he explained. "Carlo's spread the Law around Lee's troops to scare Iron Lee into joining him against the Razai. He even left one of his children, Tino T., as a hostage to show Carlo's good faith in the alliance. He has around sixty children. He can spare an idiot son."

  The general slumped back in his chair and looked down at the map. "Nance thinks there is a real possibility that Carlo's ploy with the Law will backfire if it's nudged the right way. Also, Minnie McDavies made contact. Lee's slaves have asked us for help under the Give a Damn Law."

  I rubbed my eyes as the light of the Fourth Law began chasing shadows among my lobes. Hell, I thought, what do we do when the victims on another planet demand our help under the Fourth Law? Do we grab our guns, mount our critters, and take on another planet? What if Earth demanded our help under the Give A Damn Law? What a nightmare that'd be.

  "One war at a time," I muttered to myself. Stabbing my finger at the map, I asked, "Give me the rest."

  Comini pointed with his finger. "Nance worked in behind Lee's north army with around twenty thousand rifles. The same with Lee's southern army. Each of the Razai forces has been set up to raid deep, hit, run, and make it back to prepared defensive positions. Nance is running almost half the Razai in a column north of Fire Alley, and Stays is doing the same in the south with the rest of our army. The plan is to trigger the raider forces, kill Lee's warlords, and get Lee's squats to join the Razai by telling them Carlo's plan. Then they cross the Sunrise together and nail the two Hand armies that are positioned to strike into Lee's territory." He nodded his approval. "A very bold planner, Nance Damas."

  "Yeah. I hope she's got Herb with her, too. She's going to need a fast talker."

  I turned my head and looked through one of the windows at the grim faces on the squats. Like all great plans, as well as monumental disasters, Nance's plan was very simple. Lee's squats might come over to the Razai if the risks weren't too outrageous. In addition, they didn't run a chain of command like the Razai, and like Comini did with his army. Under Iron Lee, warlords ran the armies. Chop off the head and the rest dies or flops around looking for a new head. There was also the matter of property and the many loved ones back home that Carlo's armies were about to gobble. That'd give Lee's squats an incentive.

  So, make contact with Lee's armies, knock off the warlords, invite Lee's squats to join the Razai and defend their homes, and drive our combined force into the two Hand armies that were preparing to take the entire Chop Gulf. This, of course, left at least a couple of loose ends.

  "What makes Nance think Lee's armies're going to sit still when we don't step into the trap? Even if they do, what about that third army of Carlo's, the one at the end of the valley? As soon as the fighting starts behind them, they'll turn and join in."

  Comini nodded. "That's why the fighting in front of Carlo's third has to begin and end first, just the way Carlo and Anna Tane planned it. We have to convince Lee and Carlo the entire Razai is marching between the jaws. After the shooting, that ought to draw Carlo's third army into the valley for the cleanup. That's where we'll have to hold them until Nance can get help for us."

  "We?"

  "This column. You wanted to talk bait. We're it."

  I shook my head. "Even if everything goes according to plan, the bait column'll still be facing around eight to one odds. If things blow up in our faces, though, which they tend to do once in awhile, we'll be facing Iron Lee all alone. I don't even know what those odds are."

  "Forty to one," said Shava, his jaw muscles twitching.

  I looked at Comini. "General, you ever hear of a game called baseball? This looks a lot like a sacrifice."

  "I don't know anything about baseball," he answered, "but I do know a thing or two about poker. You see, Nicos, that's not ten thousand rifles and a lot of children and wounded out there." He pointed toward the door. "That's half a million battle-hardened soldiers who are simply spoiling for a fight, and would like nothing better than to tangle with Iron Lee and Carlo at the same time and serve up the whole mess as a salad."

  "Have you been getting enough sleep, General?"

  "Nicos, from a distance we look just like that. The more we think like that, the more we'll act like that. The more we act like that, the more likely it is that whoever we fight will treat us accordingly. Also, with a little luck we'll reach Rock Island before we have to fight. We can defend the island, at least for awhile."

  "What about the help from Jak Edge and Bloody Sarah? Couldn't we wait for some more troops?"

  Comini shook his head and pointed on the map at the land west of Kegel's territory. "We got it in on the helio a few days ago. The Tommy Spanish gang crossed over Jak's wester
n border with an army of over half a million. Jak and Sarah have all they can handle down there."

  I leaned on the edge of the table and pushed myself up until I was standing. I looked at the map feeling a day late and a lobe short. Just days ago we were three thousand sorry bastards hoping no one would notice us. Now we were fighting wars on two fronts a thousand kilometers apart against a combined force of way over a million. Close to two million. That was a bigger number than I could imagine.

  I just wanted to go unconscious again and stay blitzed until the whole thing was over. I looked at General Comini. "Who's in charge of the bait column?"

  "You are, now."

  I put my ass back in my chair. "Answer me something, General. Doesn't it strike you as kind of significant that the person who's in charge of this operation was unconscious when he was appointed?"

  The general chuckled and aimed that fatherly smile at me. "You know, the Razai has quite a strategist in Nance Damas. She has my respect for her abilities, and therefore she has my loyalty." He reached out a hand and placed it on my shoulder. "Chief, Nance told me that there's only one thing this column has to do, and that's hang on. She said that conscious or unconscious, that's something Bando Nicos knows how to do better than anyone else in the universe."

  Well, as a shark back in the crowbars used to say, don't that hang the cow pie on the old barn door. I glanced at Shava Ido. He looked worried. I was relieved that someone still had a thread on reality.

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  Rock Island

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  Twenty sightless people standing around groping an elephant, trying to describe the critter, and you get reports on twenty different critters. No matter how big a mokker you were, you only got to see a piece of a battle. The general who could see the big picture couldn't see the thousands of little pictures that made up each squat's contest with the enemy, with the surroundings, and with fear. The squat couldn't see anything but his little picture; the sight, the sound, the feel, the taste, the smell of it. The big picture, and everyone else's little pictures, were invisible.